Considering biosphere as a closed thermodynamical system, inside it, biological organisms may be considered as open thermodynamical systems exchanging energy and matter with ecosystem. Making appeal to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, anthropology, biology, sociology and cliodynamics, we discuss, from an interdisciplinary stance, some main moments of human evolution from either the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic standpoint, highlighting the crucial bifurcation which saw the rising of the modern societies with respect to primitive ones.